Politics

Washington -- Mayors usually come to Washington to ask the federal government for money, but now many are asking for help with gun control, too.

"I'm trying to leverage this issue, not because of what happened in Newtown, but because economic development in Hartford depends on whether we can control gun violence," said Mayor Pedro Segarra.

Hartford's mayor said Harvard economist Edward Glaeser told him "if you can't get your crime reduced, you are not going to succeed."

The shooting deaths of 20 schoolchildren and six of their faculty at Sandy Hook Elementary School have prompted the governor and Connecticut legislature to seek ways to reduce gun violence. This is one of an ongoing series to inform that effort.

Two thirds of the murders in Connecticut from 2006 to 2011 - some 454 - were committed with a gun.

Nearly 70 percent of those killings were with handguns, in keeping with the national trend, Federal Bureau of Investigation records show.

Connecticut's governor, top Senate leader and gun-control advocates praised the broad changes to gun laws adopted Tuesday by New York in response to the Newtown shooting tragedy, calling them a strong starting point for reform.

In praising the quick action, Gov. Dannel P. Malloy said he had no regrets that Connecticut was moving slower than its neighbor in devising a policy response to the shooting of 26 students and educators at Sandy Hook Elementary.